The National Authority for the Prevention of Torture (INPT) has called on the prison authorities to refrain from collective punishment of staff and inmates in the wake of the escape of five terrorist elements from the Mornaguia civil prison. In a press release issued on Saturday, the INPT urged the prison authorities not to take reprisals against prisoners and their families for security reasons, and not to deny them access to the services offered in their places of detention. The INPT considered that the escape constituted a “dangerous precedent” in Tunisian prisons since the events of the revolution. It called for “thorough internal investigations” to be carried out in order to identify shortcomings, learn lessons and remedy the situation in the future. It recommended that prison staff be guaranteed a “fair and impartial investigation” and that a psychological follow-up programme be adopted to reduce the impact of this incident on their equilibrium and confidence in themselves and in their colleagues and superiors at work. The INPT stressed the need to launch an institutional and social dialogue on the reality of prisons in Tunisia, involving government bodies and civil society organisations. The aim is to reduce the burden on the prison system, which, it said, faces numerous security, judicial, health, educational, penal and material challenges, in addition to limited financial and human resources. It called for the incident to be used as an opportunity to strengthen cooperation between the various actors involved in the prison issue and to find comprehensive solutions to the problems raised, stressing that a security-based approach to the incident was not enough to change the situation in prisons.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse